


Beyond the Pale

by Belewitts



Series: Hard Times [2]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Dystopia, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Missing Scene, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1959720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Belewitts/pseuds/Belewitts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sat in a ruined temple, on what may be the last night of his life, and when he caught an echo of the old world teasing his mind he thought it must be long over-due senility. But it grew stronger and the smells and sounds of another time drifted into his brain with memories of shag carpet, rich coffee, and the sound of Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition.”</p><p>Charles has a lot to say to his younger self, and little time to say it in, but then what is time when you're speaking over a gap of fifty years?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Pale

When Charles was a young boy, he used to play with mirrors. This was long before he met Raven, or began hearing voices in his head. Back when his only companion in the looming mansion was the echo of his feet, and the faces he made in his Grandfather's shaving razors.  
      
He'd imagined the upturned nose and solemn eyes he saw in glass cabinets belonged to another boy. He named him Charles of course, but Other Charles was not like him. Other Charles came from a distant place where anything was possible, like Alice and her Wonderland, or little Anne Shirley with her window friends. Other Charles was his first playmate. A pale imitation of real love, which Charles didn't know he was missing until Raven tip-toed her way into his kitchen and his life.  
      
He told her about Other Charles years later, when they were reading the Velveteen Rabbit in a fit of nostalgia, half asleep and drunk on a quarter of the good brandy his mother had set aside for a party. He'd taken his Grandfather's shaving kit from his pocket, which he always kept on hand after growing his first stubble, and made a very Other Charles face for her in the reflection of a knife. She'd laughed. Raven always had such a lovely laugh.

Before Raven, Charles had everything he wanted, except friendship, which try as he might he could never manufacture. One night when he was wracked with fevers he'd tried calling for his mother, and the nurse, the butler, anyone, but no one came until he made them. So from the age of nine, Charles left a mental stamp on every servant and visitor in his mother's house. He would tell the nanny to smile, and she did. He told the cook to make him pheasant with black berry sauce, and she did. Raven had been the only exception to this familial farce. The only person who was real, besides him.  
      
It was strange how time and calamity and memory could mix together in one's mind. He hadn't thought about that imaginary friend in years. His Grandfather's kit was now tucked beneath his kevlar armor, along with a faded page from Margery Williams children's book. Relic's of life before the Sentinels. Before Charles had slept on a steel floors, drunk water out of tins salvaged from shrapnel, and listened vainly to a world that was growing as silent as the corridor's of his youth.  
      
He sat now in the speckled light of a ruined temple, on what may be the last night of his life, musing, and when he caught an echo of that old world teasing his mind he thought it must be long over-due senility. It was almost too faint to be real. But then it grew stronger, and the smells and sounds of another time drifted into his brain with memories of shag carpet, rich coffee, and the sound of Stevie Wonder singing “Superstition.”  
      
Charles breathed deep and pressed a hand against his armor, where the birch and ivory shaving kit lay wrapped in the words of the Skin Horse and the Rabbit. Are you real? He wondered as he blinked into the light and saw a golden shadow rise up from the stone slab they'd laid Logan upon.  
      
“Charles,” he whispered in his mind, and heard his name echo back to him. He looked at the wavering image of his younger self, and it was like he was facing his boyhood companion, Other Charles, come to life.  
      
“So, this is what becomes of us,” his young self thought, horror eclipsing wonder at their strange experience. “Erik was right.”  
      
Charles smiled sadly at him and wrapped the young mind in gentle feelings, just as he would have tucked a blanket around one of his long lost children. He'd forgotten how lonely he was at that age. Still fresh from his first life failures, and stumbling about as a boy who'd gone from being god of his own little world, to a crippled, real, young man. It had hurt, just the like Skin Horse said it would. It would hurt for a good deal longer too, if this Charles's life followed his own.  
      
Young Charles was bitter. He thought the talent that always set him above others had been revealed as a powerful but meaningless parlor trick, as he always, secretly, expected it would. Because deep down he'd known that telling people to be what he wanted would never be enough for him.  
      
He'd become enamored with the philosophy of free will when he was at Cambridge, but never really practiced it. Though he'd felt very superior and adult for awhile when he left off using his talent so casually, and resorted to trickery instead. He found he didn't need to control someone's mind to get what he wanted. He was a handsome, intelligent, wealthy young man after all. He could charm them, and argue with them, even seduce them. Knowing all their amusing secrets and deepest desires made it easy, and he thought he was being kind by skipping over all the awkward first impressions.  
      
This young self with his shaggy hair and struggling beard, didn't know how to love with an open hand and didn't trust others to make choices and live their messy complicated lives without him. Even now, Charles wasn't always noble enough to stay out of the way. He clung too tightly and became too involved in the minds of others.  
      
Sometimes, when he and Erik sat with their old bones shivering together and soaking in the heat of the jet engines, Erik would suggest that Charles merely didn't control everyone enough. If he couldn't hear Erik's molten thoughts rippling against his own, Charles would never have known the man was joking, but the image of himself playing with dolls and mirror friends on a cheap gilded stage of the world always undid Charles. Just as Erik had once unraveled his assertions over chess and cognac.  
      
Charles could have made them dismantle the sentinels, Erik would say, before the robots became automated. He could have every mind bowing to his will until they achieved world peace, but in the end they both knew it would be as empty and meaningless as forcing the words “I love you, Charles,” from his mother's prim lips. Under his power humanity would be just a pale reflection of himself, like his imaginary friend, and when he died, as someday he must, what chaos would wrack their planet?  
      
Someone like Trask would always come along and try to purge the unwanted. Just as they had in Germany, and the Black War, the Irish Famine, the Trail of Tears, or the genocide of Manifest Destiny. This fight ... this human urge for mass murder was not something that Charles could bypass like he had the disinterest of young women in bars.  
      
But neither could he simply sit by, and do nothing.  
      
It was a fine line Charles had learned to walk over the years, between the rebel and the pacifist. It took him a long time to learn how to fight without always winning. To understand that leaving someone with their choices did not mean he could not take up arms against them, so to speak, when he thought those choices were bad. It took Erik just as long to recognize the difference between needless passivity, and thoughtful action. Or between swift action, and right action.  
      
This younger self, this Other Charles, didn't have time to wander his way to these realizations as Charles once had. He needed to learn now, and the first step was helping him overcome his fear of the messy lives that crowded into him like termites. That had been another recurring nightmare of Charles's, along with the puppet show.  
      
His first trip on acid left Charles sitting on the floor at the bottom of the south west corridor, beside the dumbwaiter. There were termites in the baseboard, and Charles had thought the insects were stranger's thoughts which, if left to their business, would devour the mansion of his mind until it was nothing but rubble, and he was a gibbering mess in an asylum.  
      
Acid not agree with him.  
      
The experience had nibbled away at his confidence in the gloom that followed Vietnam's draft, almost as much as his shame at failure. Knowing these fears, Charles was proud to see his young self had braved the dangers of Logan's mind to find him in the future. If he'd had any doubt this young Charles could pick himself up and make a better world, it was gone now.  
      
You are so much stronger than you know, Charles, he thought. I'm a paralyzed old man, living hungry and cold, and without a bed, feeling lives burn out of existence in my mind every day. I stumble, and fall, and make mistakes, just as you will, but other mind's aren't the pests you think Charles. They are the foundations which hold us up and they can be so much better than you believe, if you let them.  
      
Let me show you. Charles thought, drawing the younger mind closer. Children were laughing in school halls. Shadows crept in. Lights shifted, growing sharper, and paler. Logan's voice rumbled out from the blur of his memories, and Charles turned toward it.  
      
“This is not gonna work.”  
      
“Keep trying,” another voice replied, smoother and feminine and a scene began to focus like a lens being turned.  
      
They were in Nevada, Reno, in a hot one room apartment on the third floor of a crowded tenement. Charles could see the colorful glare of casinos wavering on the horizon outside their window, and children riding scooters on the sidewalk below, with a rusted brown fence hemming them in. A rattling fan blended with the stomping foot-steps on the ceiling above, and below them someone was trying to play chop-sticks on the piano.  
      
In the midst of all that normality, four mutants waited in tense positions, hoping not to give themselves away. There wasn't any protection for them these days except a veil of anonymity, which was growing thinner by the year.  
      
No lead wall, or static field could hide them from a Sentinel when their genes gave them away, and while they had found a heavy traffic of human's could slow the machines down, it wasn't for long. Besides, Erik was leery of trusting the government that paid for these weapons in the first place to keep them operating under a “mutant only” program. It was too easy to hush up human casualties as “regrettable accidents” in pursuit of Enemies of the State. Not that he cared very much about the homo sapien's, but no one wanted a panic in a mob.  
      
Charles listened to the minds in their building buzzing away with concerns about how much milk was in the fridge and whether their lovers were having affairs. While behind it all, an insidious hate played on their fears like an anthem. Just as Erik's resentment whistled in his mind, Ororo's stoic grief blew, and Logan's frustration was viciously absorbed in the broken pieces of Cerebro on the table.  
      
“There's nothing to fix here,” Logan growled, tossing a dirty pair of pliers down with a crack that echoed in Charles's heart. It was just like the whip of a crop on horse hide, Logan thought in one of his usual colorful metaphors as he heard Charles's heart jump. Charles gave Logan a weighty stare and the other man looked away, grumbling, “The transistor's been shot and half the parts are missing.”  
      
“We are skulking in a flat that's brimming with machinery and you can find nothing to fix it with,” Erik mocked from the shadows, looking around at the disassembled switchboards, computer drives and televisions that Hank had collected. "You make me weep for the species, Wolverine."  
      
“No one needs excuses for weeping these days, and I'm not exactly the smartest guy in the room, am I?” Logan said, his voice rough with pain. “You wanna get off your wrinkled ass and give this a go, be my guest.”  
      
Erik did not move from his seat, stretched out on a worn, patchy couch with his leg wrapped in splints and bandages. Charles felt a bubble of resentment rising in his old friend's mind, and laid a hand on Erik's thigh from his place beside the couch, silently asking Erik to let it go and be the better man. These days, Erik usually listened.  
      
Logan snarled when the old men remained where they were, and Erik's grey eyes turned cold at the animalistic sound, a sharp feeling of triumph skirting his mind.  
      
“Erik,” Charles admonished and then added silently, _don't use this as an excuse for revenge Erik. You know he never meant to hurt you._ Erik barely acknowledge the thought, and Charles turned back to watching Logan, sitting among Cerebro's wreckage.  
  
Logan's snarl become a low, private thing and he slammed a fist on the table before rubbed it over his head. Ororo caught his hand as she passed behind him with a water jug and leaned against his back, pressing a kiss to his short hair. Logan shuddered but didn't move from his seat. He couldn't of course, any more than Erik. He'd been held on that stool since the early hours of the morning, with his skeleton humming under Erik's power, and silently raging at them like a mad creature. Erik had given him back the use of his arms only hours ago, and Charles the use of his tongue when he could trust Logan not to bellow at them.  
      
“This is cruel,” Storm said, and though she kept her back to them, Charles knew she was speaking to him. Her thoughts stung like sand against the windowpane outside. She was right. It was terribly cruel to keep Logan sitting there, with Hank's tools and blue prints lying on the table like bones. Charles wished there had been another way. He wished he'd been smarter about this, but by the time he realized what he and Erik had done it was too late. The terrible reality was they couldn't afford to make a ruckus and be noticed, and Logan did not grieve quietly like the rest of them.  
      
He'd gone berserk when they heard about Hank.  
      
It was early, about three in the morning, when it happened. Charles had been making a note on their map of mutant cells when he felt Hank die. He was too far away to know his friends thoughts as he went, but he got a hot spike through his chest, and felt the impact of Hank's body hit the ground. He must have cried out, because Storm and Logan shot up from their cots, half dressed and looking for trouble.  
      
“What happened?” Logan asked, brusque and professional as a soldier, already gathering their supplies while Storm took up the maps Charles had been so diligently charting. Logan was thinking they'd been outed. That someone had finally made that anonymous phone call about suspected mutants in the building, and a Sentinel had been dispatched to search them out. They'd have to run and meet up with Beasty and the jet down the road.    
      
“Leave those,” Erik snapped at them, taking charge in his sleep rumpled suit. He already suspected the truth. He could see it in Charles face. He'd always been able to read more in his face than Charles liked. It was what made Erik such an excellent chess partner.  
      
“It's all right, we haven't been found yet,” Charles grasped at his composure, and tried reassure Storm and Logan, focusing on the needs of the moment. Ororo's mind was still spinning with plans for getting past the blockade on the city perimeter and Logan was wondering how much fuel Hank would have in the jet. Inside Charles reeled as the last drops of Hank's life bled away somewhere in the night. His body was going cold and he couldn't feel his hands. Shock, he thought.  
      
Erik took a blanket from their borrowed couch, and wrapped the ugly knitted thing around Charles shoulder's while Ororo looked on suspiciously.  
      
“Another name to add to the list, then,” she guessed.  
      
“I'm afraid so,” Charles croaked, and steeled himself to tell them the awful truth.  
      
“Christ, how many does that make?” Logan growled turning away and picking up the remote for the one functioning television still in the room.  
      
“Six this week alone,” Erik answered, standing to join him. “That's only in the city,” he added.

They had no idea what the national total was without Cerebro, and they always turned on the news when Charles added a name to their list of the dead. None of them really expected to see anything on the TV but the same politics and Hollywood scandals, but it was habit, and perhaps a way to reassure themselves things hadn't gotten worse. So long as Mutant issues were discussed at safe distance on the news, there was hope the country felt some shame for what it was doing. That there was some semblance of human sympathy which could be reasoned with, maybe, if only they got the word out to the public.

Because unless you followed an underground blog or heard from The Operator you'd never know how many mutants were being quietly eliminated. The Sentinel Program had been careful to keep it's carry out it's mission at night, far from the public eye.  
      
A Sentinel would appear in someone's kitchen with no warning, or arrest, or even an official statement. Their victim's would simply disappear. People were killed in their beds and bathrobes, and on their toilets. The body was taken away, and the scene cleaned, then their death would be quietly announced as a “service to the country” on the back page of a local obituary. Meanwhile the public would mutter in horror about how close one of those awful mutants had been living to them, without their knowledge, like a disease that might catch.  
      
Sometimes the mob is smarter then we give them credit for, Charles thought sadly. Because this is a disease, and it will catch. A sicknesses of persecution like this does not limit itself to night time raids. The death toll was rising, and soon more people would realize it wasn't a few degenerates being removed from sight. It was their friends and family. It was the lesbian next door, and the child at the fruit stand. He'd known it was only a matter of time before it escalated, but somehow, the thought that it would start with Hank never occurred to Charles.  
      
It should have. Hank could not hold a human form anymore. He was big and blue and furry. If he hadn't completed his degrees he would never be let into a university now. He couldn't go outside without being pointed at, and only ventured out at night in trench coats and a big boonie hat. There was no hiding for mutants like Hank. They simply counted on luck, good will, and the Sentinel program being confined to some judiciary oversight, however partial.  
      
Not anymore.  
      
For the first time on television a blond anchor was announcing breaking news of a mutant death with dramatic flare and behind them a screen was playing snatched images taken off jittery hand held phones and static street cameras. A flash of claws on the sidewalk, blue blood seeping into the pavement, a dented brief case. The road was filled with late night clubbers, casino players, and graveyard shift workers, gawking and murmuring to each other over flashing cameras. A Sentinel stood above them, lit up by street lamps and neon billboards with blood on it's arm.  
      
Another nasally news anchor said something about “justice,” “dangerous mutants”, and how the Sentinels were doing good work keeping America safe and no “decent” people needed to be afraid. Charles sat in his confining chair, staring at the videos of dirty fur and a dead paw, and in the back of his mind Raven's word's from years ago echoed like a judges.  
      
“Mutant, and proud. Or is that only for pretty mutations, or invisible ones like yours.”  
      
A Sentinel had killed Hank on a busy street, in the middle of a crowd, under the full light of Reno.  
      
“Who is that?” Ororo whispered in shock, though Charles sensed she knew. “Who is it?”  
      
Erik closed his eyes, mumbling a prayer in polish and Logan had grown disturbingly quiet. The hush caught Charles's attention because Logan only got that still before an attack, when every cell in his body and restless thought in his mind coalesced into the intense focus of a predator about to leap. He saw the coiling of Logan's intent in a flash of torn up walls, and broken furniture.  
      
The simple, animalistic expression was something Charles would have hardly noticed a few years ago, when they were all tucked away on the Xavier family grounds. It certainly wasn't something he would ever have interfered with. Unfortunately, times had changed.  
      
“Erik,” Charles called sharply, shooting his concern at the other man while he grabbed hold of Logan's thoughts. Logan swept his arm into the crate of part's Hank had so carefully stacked by the east wall. Erik arrested him with a flung out a hand and snapped Logan's skeleton to a stand still. Charles realized that was a mistake as soon as Logan's mind howled in rage at the captivity. A moment ago this had been a mere flash of pain, and Charles thought they'd only need to hold Logan for a moment, until the destructive urge passed. But suddenly Logan's pain had nowhere to go. It turned, twisting with his instinctive fear of confinement, and fragmented memories of needles and concrete walls.  
      
Everything metal that had been flung in the air was stopped and floating at Erik's command, but the crates themselves were plastic and they crashed into a stack of decrepit home-made shelves, which collapsed in a thunderous wreck. One of them struck Erik's knee and he fell, cursing and clutching his brittle tibia. Ororo rushed forward, catching another shelf before it sent books and rubbish all over the floor.  
      
Someone in the apartment above banged in the floor in protest, and Logan made a low keening noise, which Charles had to silence when he sensed a roar building in Logan's throat  
      
“Logan,” Charles reached out, trying to bring him back. “Logan, stop.”

But Logan wouldn't or couldn't. He was going berserk. There were flashes of metal straps, awful machines, water and blood. The longer he was unable to move, the worse he got, and Charles couldn't risk letting him go now. They could not make noise. They could not draw attention. There was spittle on Logan's mouth and he tipped over the edge of his sanity into a place where he had no words.  
      
Charles shared a look with Erik on the floor, and with Ororo bent under the precarious shelves. The television was still playing, providing a soundtrack of hateful rhetoric to their drama.  
      
“Logan?” Storm hissed, looking between them all, confused.  
      
“He can't understand you Ororo,” Charles said sadly, wheeling forward with his cape of knitted panels, and studying Logan's helplessly twitching muscles. The mind behind them was no more aware than a rabid dog. “He's gone...”  
      
“Mad,” Erik finished his sentence, limping and pulling himself to his feet. “I warned you Charles,” he began. “A man like the Wolverine--”  
      
“That's enough Erik,” Charles cut him off, not wanting to have this discussion again. Certainly not where Ororo and Logan, for all his currently dumb state, could hear them. He looked into Logan's wild eyes and an animal glared back. He did not recognize Charles, but he knew who held the chains.  
      
“I'm so sorry, Logan,” Charles said in a pained whisper and closed his eyes, looking away. He nodded at Erik and his accomplice grunted, then with a twitch of his head he forced Logan's body back, step by step, into the kitchen and onto the stool at the table.  
      
“You're not just going to keep him there?” Storm frowned in disbelief, settling the shelves back on their stocks.  
      
“Yes,” Charles answered firmly.  
      
“Professor.”  
      
“It won't be for long,” he promised, hoping he wouldn't be proven wrong. Logan's body was vibrating with suppressed violence and Charles had never seen him like this, but then he had never held Logan captive against his will either. He'd been very careful in the past, to make sure Logan never felt trapped. “He just needs time to calm down.” Charles assured Storm. “If we were anywhere else--” he left the sentence hanging, and Ororo looked around their dirty, dim apartment.  
      
Maps were spread on the walls with string and red pins marking mutant safe houses, and immigration routes. Boxes of valuable technology were cluttered around them, with crates of stolen files and hand written notes on classified memos Charles had been copying from the minds of politicians, before they fled New York. The Operator's List lay on the floor, fluttering in the warm night breeze.  
      
It was all incriminating. If being a mutant wasn't enough, the operations visible in this room would have labeled them all terrorists. Ororo bent down and carefully picked up The List, smoothing her hands over the folded paper. She looked regrettably at Logan, and then at their thin front door, and nodded.  
      
“Not for long,” she insisted in a whisper, meaning to hold Charles to it. He nodded, and she helped Erik onto the couch, pulling together a splint from the shelving debris.  
      
It was a long night for them.

Erik was unwilling to let go of Logan's spine even for a moment, because he didn't quite trust Charles to do what needed to be done in his absence. So he didn't sleep. Charles drifted in and out, but his head and heart were aching with the lingering impression of Hank's death, and he didn't quite dare leave Logan's mind unobserved either. He tried to sooth the man on and off, but nothing helped and in the end all he could do was listen helplessly while Logan exhausted himself, like a terrified animal fighting the noose of a catch pole.  
      
Ororo was the only one who slept. She stretched out on their green army cots, looking haggard. Her eyes were dry, and her mouth was hard, but outside a wind began to blow and unseasonal rain spattered against their windows, running down the glass like tears. Ororo stared at the ceiling, crying for Hank in her own way, and Charles wondered what it must feel like to weep with weather.  
      
He wished he could join her. The longer they lived like this, moving from one cramped little flat to the next, in city after city, the more Charles found he needed the minds around him to feel real. Perhaps it was his age, or perhaps it was the worlds age, but he confessed the unsteady feeling to Erik as they sat side by side in vigil that night, and Ororo overhead.  
      
“If it will help, professor, you can watch my dreams tonight,” she offered, and then rolled over to face the wall. “Though, they won't be happy ones.”  
      
“None of us could be happy, on a night like this,” Erik mumbled.  
      
“Thank you, Ororo.” Charles smiled at her back, feeling his wrinkles tremble at the kindness she'd offered. He had never taken the liberty with her before. The two of them had boundaries, unlike Erik and Logan.  
      
Charles had always been loose with his telepathy around Erik, a weakness from their time as young men, and he felt Logan needed such constant watching that he'd never stopped listening to the man's thoughts. It was, perhaps, excessive, but the wounds in Logan's mind were deep, and the damage made him a little unpredictable, even for Charles. He didn't think his friend would ever fully heal, and he felt a responsibility for guiding the man as gently as possible away from danger. Because Logan didn't like pain, but he didn't always understand limits either.  
      
Ororo did not need someone to watch her mind for cracks, and she was not a one time lover. Nor had she ever looked on him as father figure. She respected him, but she did not need him or love him in the same way. She was nearly grown when they met, and while Scott or Jean would once come running to him with their trials and tribulations, Ororo turned to the sky. Other children would cry at the noise of thunder, but Ororo would go outside, raise her arms and dance in the rain, grinning as if she was only truly alive in a storm.  
      
Listening to her mind, Charles could understood why the winds obeyed her, because the wild currents of thought and emotion which had begun to batter him so much in this silent war, did nothing but break like surf against the rock of Ororo's soul. Her sense of self was so complete and contained, even while she slept. He'd listened to her all night, lulled by the currents of her power, and now, a day later, her grief had turned from water to a hard wind and the sky was clear.

She stood backed by late afternoon sunlight with a golden glow around her skin, glaring at him over Logan's bent head.  
      
“This has gone on long enough,” Ororo declared, looking at Charles and he felt the imperious weight of her anger scrape against his mind. “Let him up.”  
      
Charles carefully rolled up to Logan, the wheels of his chair spinning dust dervishes behind him.  
      
“Logan,” he began, studying the man's restless thoughts. He was encouraged by the curses he heard, and a lonely admission of sorrow he found beneath them. It took most of the day for Logan to regain the power of speech and he was nearly back to his old self now.  
      
“This thing should be finished already,” Logan said through gritted teeth, gesturing at the scraps of Cerebro. He'd picked up the shiny mementos of his friend sometime around mid morning, and Charles had observed the turn of his mind with relief as Logan took a step towards human awareness.  
      
“I'm sure we'll have it working soon,” he told Logan. “Hank did leave us notes.”      
      
“God damn cypher codes, more like,” Logan muttered and turned on Charles. “Hank's dead, and we can't keep up a radio silence like this. Hell we can't tell if Rogue got her girls out of Florida before the strikes and now this shit, this god-damn piece of--” he broke off with a growl that hurt Charles, reminding him of Hank.  
      
Hank would never snap his teeth at Charles again, when he interrupted him at his microscope. He'd never try to fit a bow-tie around his furry throat, or tear a plastic glove. Hank had opened a world of wonder for Charles through Cerebro, nursed him through some of his darkest, self-pitying days, and now he was just... gone.  
      
“I loved him too,” he reminded Logan, sadly. Then he nodded at Erik, and with a blink Erik released their Wolverine and Logan was up and striding off like his ass was on fire, his legs burning with the need to move. He wouldn't go far of course, he never did anymore, but Charles still shared a worried look with Storm as Logan climbed out the window, and onto the creaky landing of the fire escape.  
      
He didn't need to ask her follow him. She was already grabbing water canteens with sharp jerks. She was still angry about last night. Furious at Hank's senseless death, at Logan's reaction, at Charles and Erik for holding him down, and herself for agreeing to it. She didn't want to be near the old men anymore than Logan did, because she was afraid if she looked the professor in the face she'd say something awful that couldn't be taken back, and they needed each other too much to risk losing their operations over something like this.  
      
Charles caught her wrist as she passed him and looked up at her fierce, black eyes.  
      
“You're family, Ororo,” he said. “As much as anyone. You'll never lose me.”  
      
“To anything but a Sentinel,” she replied bitterly through cracked lips.  
      
“To anything but a Sentinel,” he promised and let her go. She swung out of the window and disappeared up the ladder, after Logan.  
      
“Well, Erik,” Charles began with a sigh, turning in his chair.  
      
“What is there to say, Charles” Erik replied, from his place on the couch. “Would you rather have let him rip up your maps, smash Cerebro, or god forbid, bring the police calling. It only takes a phone call, Charles, and one nosy little neighbor getting suspicious. Those machines would tear this building down, and where would the Operator and all your work be then? You did what needed to be done.”  
      
“That doesn't make it right, Erik,” Charles reminded him wearily. Years ago Erik would've called Charles naive. Now they older and wiser, or maybe just more tired, and Erik nodded with understanding in his eyes.  
      
“No,” he agreed softly, just for Charles. “It doesn't. But it's done none the less, Charles. Bring that mess over here, and I'll see what I can do with it. Your bulldog is right about one thing at least. We've been silent far too long.”  
      
Charles rolled to the table and carefully gathered all the bent and melted pieces of Cerebro, along with Hank's blue prints, and carefully written notes. Hank had planned to finish them last night when he returned from the Casino's. He'd gone there two days ago, looking for a source. Someone who said they'd worked for Trask Industries, and were willing to blow some whistles. He'd been so excited. Charles hadn't seen Hank so vital and full of hope in months.  
      
Outside Storm had caught up with Logan, and Charles watched from behind his eyes as she climbed over the last rung of the fire escape, and he paced the roof, smoking one his cigars. He often came up here for a smoke, and to escape the tight quarter's of their apartment. Ororo settled on the edge of the roof with one foot dangling over the side and watched him while Logan strode from one side of the roof to the next, unable to stand still.  
      
“It wasn't just Hank,” Logan finally grunted, trying to explain the ill-timed breakdown in his curious way. “It was... it's everything.”  
      
Nearby a jack-rabbit was padding, warily, across the sandy street and a lizard hissed at curious bird that got too close. The rabbit would make good eatin' and the musky odor tantalized his nose under the pervasive stink of oil and exhaust which always hung over a city.  
      
“I know,” Storm said. “We all know. The Professor,”  
      
“Oh yeah, I'm sure he knows. Nothin goes on up here,” Logan tapped his head, “that he doesn't know.”  
      
Ororo nodded, the harsh sun baking her arms and feet. Logan was sweating, and so was she but she didn't seem bothered. He guessed nothing in America would ever be as hot to her as the Sahara.  
      
“It's three weeks, since Xavier had to go silent,” Logan sighed, coming to a stop beside her and leaning on the low wall where she sat. She offered him a bottle of water, which he took, before pacing off again. “A lot can happen in three damn weeks. The kids could be anywhere. They could've been rounded up. We don't even know how far the Sentinels are reaching now. It doesn't look good for us, Storm.”  
      
“No,” Ororo agreed, her short hair flapping in the wind.  
      
“You know we're gonna have to break into the air field now. Hank's... he can't fly the jet out before they impound the damn thing now. It means making a lot of that noise the Professor doesn't like, and when that shit hits the fan--”  
      
“Boom,” Ororo agreed with solemn humor, knowing what he was going say. Then she shrugged and added, “I think we've been here too long as it is, and after last night, leaving Reno will be a relief.” She looked out over the white sand and squat, dumb buildings, while Logan idly searched the horizon, just in case they were being watched. You never knew, these days. They had a new check point on the north highway with armed men in uniform guarding toll booths. Then there was the barricade on the east side of town, and Ororo had spied an RQ-1 Predator drone parked out on the air field.  
      
“Well, that's it then,” Logan finally said, puffing on his cigar. The smoke lingered around them in a cloud before drifting down to the sidewalk on the hot air. “You know where Hank was keeping the plane?”  
      
“The south side, a private hanger,” Ororo replied.  
      
“Guess, it's time you taught me to fly the damn thing.” Logan contemplated his cigar, and Storm nodded. The two of them put their heads together, and began sketching out a plan, and below them Charles smiled sadly.  
      
They made a good team. Ororo had a talent for stealth, which reigned in Logan's more smash and bash attitude, and he always had her back, ready with his singularly focused destruction to carry them out of tight spots which Ororo could not escape without leveling a city block. She could creep unnoticed through a city, or wreck it with a storm, but there was nothing in between. They were both a bit of all or nothing, really, and somehow they managed to moderate each other in ways Charles never expected.  
      
It just went to show, even a telepath could miss the obvious if he wasn't looking for it.  
      
He sighed and turned his attention away from Storm and Logan, settling a pair of Hank's goggles over his eyes and taking up a pen. He quietly deciphered Hank's short hand notes and directed Erik while the other man manipulated copper into a molten form and sent tiny lines running along circuit chips.  
      
They'd still had a working model of Cerebro until they were shot over the Pacific three weeks ago. Erik held the jet together, healing up breaches as bullets peppered their hull and Ororo wrestled them through the barrage, but half of Cerebro and their supplies were lost. It took Hank weeks to pull all the workable pieces together.  
      
Logan had done some small damage in his heavy handed attempt to repair Cerebro. The delicate instrument wasn't a motorcycle engine after all, but he had also soldered over a crack in the casing and completed the body work for the new machine. It wasn't as smooth or elegant as Erik would have made it, and Charles felt his dissatisfaction with that.  
      
“I think it's perfect, just the way it is,” Charles replied to his dear friend's thought, running a hand over the welded scar on the metal. Erik humphed and left him the precious memento.  
      
They worked late on the repairs, only stopping long enough for Charles to roll into the kitchen and make an awkward stew, with Erik directing him. Erik was a far better cook than Charles, but he was a bit stuck with a splint on his knee, confined to fiddling with the delicate wires in Hank's machinery.  
      
The new Cerebro would be smaller then it's predecessor, capable of being carried remotely like a headset. It wouldn't have the same range and Charles didn't think he'd ever feel the whole world in his mind again, but it would be enough. When he returned to the couch Charles ran a reverent hand over the scarred metal, thinking of Hank.  
      
They could not retrieve his body. Hank would not be buried and have no plaque with the epitaph of beloved friend that he so richly deserved. They had become a state where people cut loved ones out of photos, and didn't talk about where they went. Everyone was silent. Many were afraid they would be next, and the rest hadn't realized, as Charles did and Erik knew all along, that in a regime of fear everyone was “next.”  
      
Charles still had hope they could stop it. He needed to. For Hank's sake, and the sake of every other murdered mutant. They might still shut down the program while it was confined to the United States.  
      
The sun was getting low by the time he and Erik finished. Charles sensed movement on the roof, and heard the clang of a rusty ladder knocking against the building before Ororo came inside, followed by Logan and a cloud of sweet smelling smoke. Charles was very careful to stay still and not smile when Logan turned his nose toward their kitchen, nostrils twitching. Storm brushed his arm and went to find them something to eat, while Logan remained at the window, as near as he could get to the outside world. The empty kitchen stool sat between them like an accusation.  
      
“Logan,” Charles said, softly.  
      
“Professor,” Logan acknowledge roughly. The word made Charles breath easier, and almost felt like forgiveness because only his old friends called him that anymore. Charles had ceased to be a professor when they burned down his home, confiscated his fortune, revoked his degrees and labeled him a mutant insurgent. He hadn't known the courts still charged men for sedition, but apparently they did. Erik had once observed, in a dry voice, that Washington must be more threatened by the rebellion of one of its own, then the acts of a poor, old Jew.  
      
“You got it working,” Logan observed stiffly, nodding at the lumpy head piece Cerebro had become.  
      
“So we hope,” Charles said, nodding at Erik who was pretending to be absorbed in some detail of Cerebro. Charles doubted Logan or Ororo were fooled by the act, but he appreciated the attempt at civility on Erik's part.  
      
“You don't know?” Logan raised critical eyebrow.  
      
“Well, engineering was never my field, and, there was a lot of damage.”      
      
“Yeah. I probably didn't help with that,” Logan acknowledged, scratching at his beard.      
      
“You needed the distraction,” Charles replied. “You didn't damage anything important, and I don't think we'd be making a broadcast tonight, if you hadn't finished that casing.”  
      
“Broadcast.” Logan perked up and shared a look with Ororo who had turned around at Charles words. They both glanced at the television, which was mercifully blank. None of them wanted to see Hank's death replayed over and over again. “Are you gonna...” Logan trailed off, gesturing at the TV.  
      
“Yes.” Charles nodded, feeling a fresh swell of pain in his chest. After a heavy pause, and a fortifying breath he added “I owe you an apology, Logan."

"Yeah, you do," he grunted.

"I hope you know I had the best intentions.”  
      
“I know,” Logan said, and Charles sighed. Intentions mattered little to Logan. He felt violated and yet the man was still here. It worried Charles. But then, Logan always worried him. There was a sort of long-suffering acceptance in the man's mind, like an animal that had been beaten so many times it simply lay down and took the stick, even from someone he loved.  
      
“I will never--” he began and Logan cut him off.  
      
“Don't. Don't say anything, Professor. We've got no way of knowing what's coming anymore. We're not in your mansion. We're not safe and you can't promise you won't need to do it again.”  
      
Sometimes, Charles thought Logan would be the best and worst thing he left behind in this world, branded like a cattle with his influence. More than all the kitchen maids and footmen that once served in his mother's house. It disturbed Charles how unruffled Logan was by the idea.  
      
Ororo returned from rummaging over the pot Charles had put on the stove, with a couple bowls of stew. Logan reached for one and she held it of reach.  
      
“Hey, what's that about?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.  
      
“Well, who said I got this for you?” Ororo smirked. Logan growled, eyes locked on the savory stew bowl and Charles heard him briefly think about slipping out the window again and going hungry for awhile, but damn that soup smelled awful nice. They hadn't had a rightly cooked meal in awhile. Seemed the Professor had finally learned something useful.  
      
Ororo waved the bowl at him, sending a fresh waft of beef broth at him, and then pulled away, forcing him to step further into the room after her. Soon she was dodging his hands while he chased her around the couch. Charles left them to it, relieved to see Logan inside, without one foot out the door. They would put themselves to rights, somehow, after last night. Though the hole Hank had left behind would always be there.  
      
Charles carefully raised Cerebro to his head, and took a deep breath, like a diver preparing to go under. Then with look at Erik, each of them hoping this would work, he flicked the switch.  
      
It was almost like the first time all over again. Hundreds of lives and hopes and fears rushed into his mind, filling him up. It had once been a cacophony to Charles. Now it was a symphony of the most incredible music he'd ever heard. He wished everyone could experience what he did. Perhaps then there wouldn't be so much fear in the world.  
      
“Good evening,” Charles spoke into the void and heard his voice echo in the mind of every mutant in three hundred miles. “I am The Operator.”  
      
Erik leaned back and pulled a hat low over his eyes, thinking of his mother and praying silently as he always did on a broadcast night. Ororo settled down beside Logan on the floor, their knees knocking together, with stew bowls in each hand. Both of them imagined the faces of friends and children they hadn't seen in too long, and waited with baited breath for the news.  
      
Real news.  
      
Charles stretched out with Cerebro, trying to push his range further and further and see if he could still reach coast to coast.  
      
A young waitress in Carson City stopped, and set down her dinner trays when she heard his voice. A black man with dreadlocks and red eyes looked up from his newspaper in Redding. A dirty young girl paused in an alley, in Fresno, holding her twin while a policemen searched the street beyond. A dozen faces, hidden under tarps in a shipping crate, cried with relief and clutched at their loved ones. In San Francisco, Jubilation Lee ran into a basement and shouted, waking up the ragged crew huddled around another map with red tacks.  
      
“He's back, he's back. They're alive!”  
      
“If this is your first time hearing our messages,” Charles said, “please don't be alarmed. I am like you, gifted, different, and now targeted, but determined to save every mutant life that I can. I know you're afraid, but you are not alone. There are people who can help.  
      
After our broadcast three weeks ago I was informed the last group in New York successfully reached the port, and are now on their way across the Atlantic. To the team in Wichita, there is a house at 37.59258, -97.379634 where you will find supplies and the name of a man who will take you South to Galveston.”  
      
His audience grew as Charles spoke, pushing himself to reach more and more minds. Some people gathered their families and listened together as if they were following CNN. For others Charles's underground mental radio was the only contact they had with their own kind. But whoever they were, and wherever they lived, mutants who heard The Operator stopped what they doing and felt a surge of hope. Some for the first time, and others as a familiar relief, but all together it created such feeling of purpose that even in the wake of Hank's loss Charles believed they could win. They were in this together and they would not surrender quietly in the dark.  
      
He continued reporting until his voice ran dry. Relaying information from his maps, passing along safe routes and names, and taking information from the cell in San Francisco. He listened to the cries and passed along personal messages from fathers to daughters, sisters to brothers and lovers to lovers. He had to sadly shake his head at Logan, when he couldn't reach Rogue. She was too far out range, where-ever she was, and he shared familiar look with Erik when he found no trace of Raven either. They didn't know what happened to her. Charles suspected she was dead now, but he kept looking anyway, always hoping that maybe he'd just missed her, somewhere.  
      
Finally there was only one bit of news left to relate.  
      
“The list of our dead today is, I'm afraid, a long one,” he took a deep breath and began with the worst. “Hank McCoy, Marcia Delgado, Rosa Brooks, Benny Duboit, Joanna Glover, Shinjuro Fukiu...” The list went on, detailing every mutant death Charles had confirmed in the last three weeks. It was a sobering end to the mental transmission, but Charles could never make himself start with the dead, so he must end with them. “Lucy Gutierrez, Milton Briggs, Ismael King, Tricia Cortez...”  
      
His voice was fading now, growing distant and breaking up like the tin sound of a broken radio.  
      
“Sam... byn Clar...Ken...Esth... uke Spen...”  
      
The memory wavered. The hot golden glow of that long ago apartment where four mutants listened to a catalog of the dead bleed into a darker, colder time, many years later, where the same four faces now hid in a shadowy temple. Colored glass reflected rainbows on all their gaunt faces and Charles looked into the hurt eyes of his younger self.  
      
“It's not their pain you're afraid of Charles,” he whispered into the past. “It's yours, and hard as it may be their pain will make you stronger. If you allow yourself to feel it. Embrace it and it will make you more powerful than you ever imagined. It's the greatest gift we have, to bear their pain without breaking, and it's born from the most human part of us. Hope.”  
      
I've made that broadcast every night for twenty years, Charles thought, and it's only gotten longer. You can change that.  
      
I can't.  
      
“Please Charles” he said to himself. “We _need_ you to hope again.”  
      
I'm not like you. I'm not a revolutionary, I never was.  
      
You can be. You will be. Erik will teach you, and you will teach him how to be a peaceful man. Remember what the Skin Horse once said, he thought. “By the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”  
      
Be real Charles. Don't be a man afraid to step out of his door and beyond his comfortable providence. Because no pride or fear on our part is worth that list of names.  
      
He was crying now. He must be, because he had to blink as time began sweeping out of his mind like a retreating tide.  
      
He was back in their plane, huddled with Erik and Logan against the cold while Ororo flew them through a storm. He was in the ruins of Saint Petersburg. He was directing survivors out of Morocco while bombs dropped around them. He was in Paris and Cambridge, and home again in his own halls with unbrushed hair and circles under his eyes. He was Charles Xavier, who had lived and loved and survived so much more then he ever thought himself capable of. He was Charles Xavier, an addict who hadn't left home in almost a decade.  
      
He gagged, and felt his hands tremble on Logan's rough face, the course beard stubble holding him steady against the flow of a life not yet lived.  
      
Logan. Charles had only met the man a few days ago, but now he'd swear he'd known him for years.  
      
“You find what you were looking for?” Logan asked, as Charles slumped back in his chair. He wasn't sure if he had. He wasn't even sure if he was himself anymore, or if he was that man from the future.  
      
A sharp patter of feet came down the hall and Logan rose out of his reach, leaving the familiar heavy smell of leather, smoke and sweat behind him. Charles was still a little dazed when he turned to see Hank round the corner, with his striped shirt and large black glasses, his awkward knees and vaguely puzzled expression. God, he looked so young. So alive. Like he'd never been hunted down in Reno, and killed in cold blood on West 4th St, in front of a crowd at three in the morning.  
      
Oh, Hank, Charles thought. His throat felt lumpy and Hank was getting a little blurry around the edges.  
      
“Power's back on,” Hank said.  
      
“Yes,” Charles murmured. “Yes, it is.” Then he turned back to Cerebro with a harder mind then he'd had moments ago. I won't let it happen, my friend, he thought. I won't let that be our future, and I won't hide from the world that you and Raven and Erik never had the luxury of escaping. I think, I might understand my sister's choices a little now.  
      
I think I might have started growing up.


End file.
